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Friday, May 13, 2011

Anime Expo 2011 Virtual Guest of Honor - Hatsune Miku

I can say that technology has truly gone a long way with this guest of honor announcement. Hastune Miku is a mix of fan culture and technology. Miku a virtual pop idol, whose voice is made by a vocal synthesizer. Her legendary holographic performance marks the mix of technology and the anime community. Anime Expo just announced that Hatsune Miku will be Anime Expo's first Virtual Guest of Honor, complete with a 3D holographic concert using state-of-the art technology. This concert is brought together when AX partnered with three giants to make it happen: Toyota, Sega, and Crypton Future Media.

Hatsune Miku is the creation of Crypton Future Media, a music production company in Japan. They sampled the voice of voice actress Saki Fujita. To make Miku more marketable, they gave her a unique futuristic pop idol design and gave her the green twintails that make her so iconic. Using the vocal synthesizer, the fan community started mixing and making interesting music, like this and this. Since there is no official artist for Miku, there have been a wide variety of interpretations of Miku. Including a cosplay from my friend Mikari who did a cosplay of Miku cosplaying as Alicia from Valkyria Chronicles.

Hatsune Miku is the second generation of the Vocaloid series of characters. The original ones are Meiko (female) and Kaito (male). After Miku came the third generation of Vocaloids Rin (Female), Len (male), and Luka (female). Like Miku, they are sampled off of well known voice actresses and actors.

Miku is ubiquitous in the anime world, you will see her cosplay all over anime conventions. She was the figure used on a BMW Z4 E86 on the Super GT during 2008 and 2009. In 2010, Team Cox used her on their Porche 996 GT3-R. Toyota recently revealed that Hatsune Miku will be its official spokesperson for the Toyota Corolla in the United States.

Her Concert will be on July 2nd in the Nokia Theatre, it will be a day to remember.